Heroine In Heels is a top 10 London lifestyle blog aimed at the modern day woman. Covering things to do in London, restaurant reviews, hotels as well as where to go in the world when you want to escape London

My Fitness Journey and Virgin Active Mayfair 15th Birthday

Tuesday, 26 February 2019

I still remember a time when working out just wasn't that cool, well, especially for women. A couple of friends might have purchased a gym membership but we'd always joke that it hadn't been touched in years. Those were the days when everyone was asking "Does my bum look big in this?" and hope that the answer was no.

Yet here we are in the golden age of fitness and isn't it fantastic? I've really fell in love with working out and the gym in the last few years, but trust me, it wasn't always like that. In fact I used to be pretty unfit. I remember when I was an intern and after another day at the office I for some reason decided I wanted to challenge myself and out of nowhere booked my place for The Great North Run which if you don't know is a half marathon! My first day of training I put on my iPod (showing my age now) and went for a run... I couldn't even run to the end of one song! I am pleased to say after many months of training I managed to run the entire race without stopping in a respectable 2:19.

Now days I'm much more fit and over the last few years I've really worked on my strength with weight training. If you followed me on Instagram last year, you might have seen my weightlifting journey and me hitting my goal of a 100kg deadlift.

Unfortunately I let things slide a little with the weightlifting and don't do anything near as hardcore at the moment, instead favouring more functional strength training. I've really turned to classes over the last few months to help mix it up and work different parts of my body that I just never even knew needed working out!

Which was why it was amazing to be invited down to Virgin Active Mayfair to come check out the epic facilities, work out and start celebrating their upcoming 15th Birthday. So let me show you around...

The place is absolutely huge! The main gym floors massive with enough equipment to meet everyones needs probably twice over! There's enough treadmills, bikes and cross trainers to keep everyone happy, but then the weights and strength area is just mind boggling to me.

See that below? It's a whole wall of TRX!

Back when I was doing heavy weights, I lived near the dumbbells, plates and rack areas. I do miss my deadlifts, but I do have problems with my hips and essentially if I don't gain flexibility (and strength) in them, it's going to cause me bigger problems later on. Which is why I've been doing a lot of classes, tried yoga and barre, but for me the winner is Pilates Reformer.

So yes, it looks like a medieval torture device. But fear not! The reformer was invented by Pilates founder Joseph Pilates and is called a carriage which is essentially a bed-like frame with a flat platform on it, which rolls back and forth on wheels within the frame. There are springs on one end that add the resistance.

The benefits of reformer pilates is that you can add and control the amount of resistance giving yourself a much harder pilates workout.

Virgin Active in Mayfair have a whole reformer studio and multiple classes on per day. I went to the 7:40am one which meant I could go before work.

The reformer is an amazing core workout and in the session I went to on Monday, there was a focus on arms too and they burned! I came away feeling so well stretched yet also like I'd really pushed my muscles too.

After the session I had a look at the other dedicated studios, and found the spin studio. It looked so cool and basically like a disco.

My other favourite after the reformer studio was the boxing studio. At my previous gym I used to do sparring with my PT once a week as its an amazing cardio workout, but also has a kick ass purpose. I'm not a cardio person at all, but if can teach me to hit whilst doing cardio, I do it! It doesn't half get your out of breath quickly though!

The next Rocky?

Maybe not… but honestly I just fell in love with this gym. They have so many amazing classes and such a huge, none cramped space, it felt so nice to just be there. Plus, and a bit of a niche thing, but it smells really good! They must pump out perfume or something!

Which is why it’s very exciting that on Thursday it’s their 15th Birthday! And to celebrate they are throwing a fitness party. As you can see below, they have a whole day of activities on to celebrate. I mean they’ve priorities coffee so they’ve already won me over! Plus they have a sparring workshop! Right up my street!

So why not check it out and get in on the fitness party action. Check out everything on their website here

At the end of the day, fitness should be fun, and you should enjoy doing it. So whatever gets you moving, whether that’s running, weights, dancing or boxing, just keep doing it- you’re doing great!

Being a kid was amazing. Running around the park, swinging from trees, grazed knees and muddy hands. Then there were the birthday par...

Heroine In Heels is copyright to Laura Hyatt. No material may be republished without consent. Powered by Blogger.

Laura

Hi, I'm Laura, a Cloud computing engineer, blogger by night, living the girl boss dream here in London. You'll find me either sipping on a cocktail in the latest London bar, chowing down on some amazing food or when I can, exploring the rest of the world... all in good heels of course!